You have guys that have been around for four years and they’re successful for a reason. They stuck around and learned how to win.

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – How would Jabari Parker have fit into this world-weary team, this league, this Big Ten attitude this season?

“The league does have that vibe,” Michigan State junior Branden Dawson said. “We have guys who have been playing together for a long time.”

The old men of Michigan State sat back in the locker rooms of Bankers Life Fieldhouse at the Big Ten Tournament this weekend soaking in the knowledge that this was all coming together for them. They were happy to be used to this feeling. And they were shaking their heads a bit at the newcomers.

Parker, who was recruited hard by MSU coach Tom Izzo, could have been the freshest face in the Big Ten this season. But he chose Duke over life in East Lansing. So if the Big Ten is going to win its first national title since 2000, it will be on old legs, not new ones.

Familiar dance steps

The Spartans, like the guys at Michigan and Wisconsin and Ohio State, know how this goes. The two seniors, three juniors, two sophomores and one redshirt freshman who make up the Spartans’ rotation have practiced the steps when it comes to the Big Dance.

“They had all those freshmen, all those McDonald’s All-Americans, and we felt disrespected,” Dawsen said. “A lot of people just forgot about us. And we told each other we weren’t going to just let a bunch of freshmen come in and beat us.”

That would be a good attitude for the Big Ten to keep for the next three weeks. March will be their old version of the game, juxtaposed against a national game that has centered on a crop of transcendent freshmen that swept through the college basketball world.

Seven of them are listed among ESPN’s top nine NBA prospects. Parker landed at Duke, and along with Kansas’ Andrew Wiggins and Joel Embiid, Syracuse’s Tyler Ennis, Arizona’s Aaron Gordon and Kentucky’s Julius Randle, he has been part of a group that has tantalized NBA GMs this season.

The Big Ten this season, for the most part, has missed out on the phenomenon.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the league will miss out when it comes to the Final Four.

In the one-and-done era, freshmen headed to the first round of the draft haven’t guaranteed success for their college teams.

Ohio State's Greg Oden eyes the basket on a shot attempt under the defensive pressure of Central Connecticuts' Tristan Blackwood during the 2007 NCAA men's basketball tournament. Oden was a one-and-done freshman at OSU who helped the Buckeyes to the national title game before turning pro. John Kuntz, The Plain Dealer

In the eight years of the one-and-done rule, there have been 50 freshmen drafted in the first round. Ten of them have come off Final Four teams, including Greg Oden, Mike Conley Jr. and Daequan Cook with Ohio State in 2007.

The Kentucky crew from 2012, led by Anthony Davis, are the only three freshmen in this era to go from cutting down the nets to sharing the stage with former NBA commissioner David Stern a few months later.

With Kentucky’s batch of freshmen missing the NCAA Tournament altogether last season, and with the Wildcats going from 40-0 talk in the preseason to out of the top 25 by the end of this regular season, the shine may be coming off the one-and-done apple.

That point was made as Indiana’s Noah Vonleh - the Big Ten freshman of the year and the only possible one-and-done candidate in the league this season- glumly sat in Indianapolis after a first-round loss to Illinois that ended the Hoosiers’ longshot NCAA hopes. The problem for the Hoosiers in his mind? Communication – maybe not a surprise for a team with three true freshmen in the rotation.

“I don’t assume anything,” Vonleh said. “I knew were losing a lot of players (from last year) and I knew we were going to have a lot of freshmen. I knew it was going to be tough. We played pretty well, but we lost a lot of games we shouldn’t have.

“I think it can be difficult the first three or four games of the season, but I think we all adjusted pretty well. Next year, I think we should be a lot better.”

If Vonleh is around.

Wisconsin’s Nigel Hayes (8 ppg, the Badgers’ sixth-leading scorer) and Michigan point guard Derrick Walton (8 ppg, the Wolverines’ fifth-leading scorer) will be the most important Big Ten freshmen in the NCAA Tournament. They aren’t stars. Parker at Duke, Wiggins at Kansas and Randle at Kentucky are leading their teams in scoring, while Gordon at Arizona and Ennis at Syracuse are second on their teams.

Familiar with fab freshmen

It’s not that the Big Ten is a stranger to talented freshmen. Jared Sullinger was the national freshman of the year while helping lead a team balanced by seniors David Lighty, Jon Diebler and Dallas Lauderdale to a No. 1 ranking three seasons ago. Michigan reached the title game last season with freshmen Nik Stauskas, Mitch McGary and Glenn Robinson III all playing huge roles. But they all came back.

And now they have experience in their back pocket (if basketball shorts had pockets), for when they might meet a Parker or a Wiggins down the line.

“I see a lot of different things, especially on defense, that I didn’t see last year,” Robinson said. “It’s the little tricks you can use to keep your opponent off-balance.”

Michigan's Mitch McGary says that the lure of turning pro after one college season can be a distraction to teams with NBA-quality freshmen.AP

So McGary, sidelined by a back injury that has kept him out most of his sophomore season, can offer advice to guys like Wiggins and Parker. The freshman thing almost worked for Michigan last year.

“A lot of it’s mental,” McGary said. “So for Wiggins and Parker and guys like that, if you’re thinking about going to the next level or are you going to stay, it gets between you and your game and your teammates, and it messes you up. Just hold off thinking about it until after the season.”

That’s not a problem in the Big Ten. There are plenty of standout sophomores on conference tourney teams, from the Michigan holdovers to Michigan State’s Gary Harris to Wisconsin’s Sam Dekker to Nebraska’s Terran Petteway. They just aren’t quite so wide-eyed.

From Ohio State’s Aaron Craft to Michigan State’s Keith Appling and Adreian Payne to Wisconsin’s Ben Brust to Iowa’s Roy Deyvn Marble, the seniors in the Big Ten hold a lot more sway in March than the guys just out of high school.

“You have guys that have been around for four years and they’re successful for a reason,” Brust said. “They stuck around and learned how to win.”

Ohio State coach Thad Matta, who has coached five of the six Big Ten one-one-done players from this era (Indiana’s Eric Gordon is the other) has seen both kinds of teams. He’d never turn down Oden and Conley again. But when he was asked about No. 1 seed Wichita State earlier this season, he may as well have been talking about his own league.

“If you don’t have the stud one-and-done freshman class, the next thing is probably the fourth- and fifth-year guys that have been in the program and been together,” Matta said, “where that kind of lends itself to the possibility of having a great run.”

Still, if Parker had chosen Michigan State, Izzo and the Spartans would have found a way to fit him into green. But the old Spartans aren't pining for Parker.

“Jabari Parker is a great player and a great kid,” Michigan State’s Dawsen said. “But Coach Izzo is all about the team. He’s not all about one person. (Parker) went to Duke, and I think that’s a perfect fit for him to go in and be the guy.”

Without those star freshmen on the best teams, there hasn’t been much new to this Big Ten season, and the league won’t offer the college basketball world in the NCAA Tournament much that it hasn't shown before.

The old men at Michigan State and around the league, at least for this season, seem to be OK with that.

Follow Us

cleveland.com is powered by Plain Dealer Publishing Co. and Northeast Ohio Media Group. All rights reserved (About Us).The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Northeast Ohio Media Group LLC.